


Imprints on the Body and Soul

by DarthAnimus



Series: Vesperia Soulmarks AU [1]
Category: Tales of Vesperia
Genre: Gen, Platonic Soulmates, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, reimagining a soulmate trope
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-01
Updated: 2017-05-01
Packaged: 2018-10-26 12:33:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10786827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarthAnimus/pseuds/DarthAnimus
Summary: In a world where every meaningful encounter in your life gives you a Mark, Yuri didn't have many Marks before leaving Zaphias. All the changes he goes through, both good and bad, increase that number. But some he appreciates more than others.





	Imprints on the Body and Soul

**Author's Note:**

> This story mostly follows the canon plot, only with some added insight offered by Soulmarks telling everyone what you're really feeling. Assumes knowledge of the plot up until the Shrine of Baction.

Yuri was quite certain that he hated whatever biological or psychological imperative it was that caused Soulmarks to take shape. Whenever a person began to change because of the presence of another person in their life, that person left a Mark on their body. The Marks were like warnings of: "this person could ruin you," but they appeared too late to serve as a proper forewarning to stay away from some people.

The Marks didn't even hold importance. Your oldest, dearest friends wouldn't leave a Mark if they didn't steer you towards a certain path you wouldn't even consider without them. Your dead family who you'd never known would never even get a chance to leave an imprint. Your worst enemy could leave a never-fading Mark on you with sheer cruelty.

Yuri's Marks took the shape of stars. Yuri's first star had been on his right arm, in the dip on his elbow, its color the muted blue of a cadet soldier's uniform. It was fitting, as it had formed when Flynn had spurred Yuri to join the Imperial Knights.

The Mark Flynn left was Yuri's first. It was the first to appear on his skin and it was the first to start fading away when Yuri walked away from the Knights and the corruption.

There hadn't been any new markings on Yuri's body for a while after. Yuri'd become stationary, aimlessly slipping through life and not really grasping at another person. Then he'd met Estelle and together they'd ended up on a journey to save Flynn's life.

Flynn had also given Estelle her first Mark, Yuri would find out one evening when the two didn't have anything better to discuss than their Marks. It had been Estelle who brought the matter up in Quoi Woods while they'd been having a lunch break in the seemingly nonthreatening woods.

Estelle sighed heavily after Yuri's estimation of her as being sheltered. "Fair enough, I suppose," the woman had said sullenly. "I haven't had many chances to gain any Marks. Not enough people have gotten close."

"It's not so rare, being distant," Yuri said easily. "I consider the Lower Quarter my family but I sure don't have Marks from them."

"That's unexpected," Estelle said bluntly and Yuri fell silent, not knowing how to answer. "It's just. You seem so worldly," Estelle hurried to explain, waving her hands while Repede scoffed from somewhere around her knees, tauntingly right outside of petting distance.

Yuri shot the dog a warning look, not about be ridiculed. "Not really," he said to Estelle. "I haven't gone far from Zaphias before and I've been content with my life, so there hasn't been much need to change." It was mostly the truth. He hadn't seen many ways for himself to change, but, he had always felt the need for something to give.

Estelle nodded, like she understood. "I don't really have friends or close mentors or even rivals to drive me to change," she explained and Yuri felt that perhaps she _did_ understand, at least a little. "Flynn was actually my first friend."

"Same," Yuri said with a breathy laugh but Estelle was focusing on removing the glove on her right hand to show a dark blue flower blooming in the middle of her palm. Yuri noted a forming callus in the inner arch of her thumb, the result of gripping a weapon tightly when fighting off monsters. It was an interesting contrast when viewed right next to the little flower.

"The openness symbolised by the open palm," Estelle started to explain, "is essential to trusting friendship." She placed a finger on top of her Mark. "The locations of Soulmarks tell of the lessons they teach," there was something about her voice that made Yuri feel like he was being lectured. "Flynn is the first person I trusted whole-heartedly, and he's a dear friend." Estelle clenched her hand into a fist slowly, closing her fingers over the Mark protectively. "So I want to help him now."

Yuri thought about the faded blue on his arm and frowned. Astute, Estelle didn't ask about it, but she did look like she still wanted to say something. She only picked the topic up again after they'd already spent some time continuing their journey through the woods.

"Flynn was the first who really listened to what I had to say," Estelle told Yuri. "I hadn't realized before how much I'd wanted someone to value my opinions, even a little." Estelle pouted then, a much more playful expression when compared to before. "Flynn doesn't really seem to know what to do after listening, however."

Yuri laughed, glad that this other person who'd been marked by Flynn could see him so clearly. "He doesn't get a lot of things, but he's dependable."

Estelle hummed in agreement, smiling. "I really am glad to be out here," she confessed. "Back in Zaphias, I just drifted through life without really doing much. Maybe out here I can make a difference."

It was a familiar sentiment. Yuri tried not to think back on the endless still days in the Lower Quarter and swung himself over a fallen tree trunk. "Let's get going then," he declared, turning to Estelle to offer her a hand over the obstacle. "There's a whole world waiting out there, not just Flynn."

Estelle grinned and grasped his hand, allowing Yuri to heave her up from the ground and over the tree trunk. As they continued on their path to Halure, Yuri thought that there was a light spring to Estelle's step. His knee itched, but it wasn't all that unpleasant and he decided to let it be. The itch didn't really do much more than make him want to keep moving, anyway.

It would be hours later, while spending the night at Halure, that Yuri would look at his right knee and see his second Mark. Estelle had formed a pink star on his knee somewhere between Zaphias and Halure. She'd been the primary catalyst for Yuri leaving Zaphias. In a way, everything Yuri would experience during said journey could be attributed to meeting Estelle. Yuri decided she deserved her place on his skin.

He also wondered if he'd given Estelle a flower to match the star she'd given him. However, they didn't really talk about markings after that first time, so Yuri never found a good chance to ask.

When the red mark first appeared on his left bicep in Capua Nor, Yuri thought it was a bug bite. It was a dull red, only a touch darker than his skin tone. Only, once it began to darken, Yuri realized that no bug bites took the shape of perfectly symmetrical stars.

The Mark kept darkening and Yuri's prods on it turned into scratches whenever he caught sight of it. Soon enough it had deepened into an unmistakable Soulmark and even the sight of it irritated Yuri. He thought about the injustices in the world, and the Mark darkened.

Somewhere between "You guys would be lost and lonely without me around," and "Do you think you'd wanna maybe start a guild with me?" Yuri obtained another Mark, a yellow star in the palm of his hand that had taken a while to form and had only been unmistakable to Yuri once he'd already decided that he didn't really want to part ways with Karol.

Living in the Lower Quarter, your friends never went far. You didn't have to worry about potentially never seeing them again if you didn't tell them to come over again. The people in the Lower Quarter always knew where everyone was, or at least where they were likely to find someone. Yuri hadn't really ever learned to differentiate between the people he didn't mind, the people he liked, and the people he was happier with than without.

Apparently, Karol fell into the latter category. Yuri didn't want him to vanish into the wide world, hard if not impossible to ever find again. And when he weighed the idea of forming a guild with Karol against returning to the Lower Quarter, the guild sounded much more tempting. Yuri cared about the community he came from, but he knew they'd always be there waiting whenever he got too homesick.

By the time the group had made it to Dahngrest, Yuri could count four Marks on his skin. Flynn's faded Mark on his right arm, Estelle's soft pink on his matching knee, Karol's yellow in the palm of his right hand, and the mysterious red Mark on his left bicep. He'd stopped worrying about it, even though it sometimes rose from the back of his mind when bathing or changing. The Mark that looked and felt dark, but seemed to have no purpose.

Then Barbos flung himself off Ghasfarost, all the while gloating to Yuri about the enemies he would make. "Regret, sorrow, and despair will hound you all the way to hell, and I will be waiting there for you." Those had been the man's last words, and Yuri thought about the star on his arm. 

'Enemies, huh,' Yuri mused as he turned away from the edge. 'Sure, I definitely have to worry about those if they keep killing themselves.' Really, Yuri didn't fear the dead, it was the threats still alive that made him worry.

The meaning of the Mark was cemented when its color settled on blood red on the night Yuri realized that the likes of Ragou would never face justice, because justice was tied up by politics. He brought Ragou to justice himself, sword swung by the arm that held the Mark he knew encountering Ragou had created. After all, if people like Ragou didn't exist, Yuri would never need to change into someone ready to do away with them.

After Yuri returned to his lodgings for the night, he thought about the bloody body he'd flung into the river. His right hand went to the red star on his bicep, and scratched at it until the repetitive motion calmed his mind enough to let him sleep.

In the end, each person Yuri killed left their Mark on his skin, dotting his right arm with small, blood red stars that failed to make Yuri feel regret. No, Flynn's accusations, both the ones in his eyes and in his words, did that well enough. There was the first Mark from Ragou, highest up his arm, from blatant murder. There was another slipping lower and to the side from that, for Cumore, whose death Yuri had caused without ever drawing a blade.

Yuri tried not to think too much about his red Marks, but he took comfort in the outline of one large star taking shape on his torso, tucked partially away under his arm. The outline was black, and it had first appeared when Yuri had told Flynn: "I'm going to start up a guild." The star was the size of Yuri's hand pressed up against his side and Yuri decided that he could fit his guild in there, in that single Mark.

The first color to start filling the empty space inside the outline was the hopeful yellow of Karol. Yuri recognized it from the small star of friendship in his left palm that was the exact same color. The second color was Judith's midnight blue. That one took Yuri some time to figure out, because Judith connected with them all in a way that was very wisp-like, slowly building up trust and contentment between them all. Yuri really found out the truth when the group was crossing the Sands of Kogorh for the second time. It was Rita who'd proclaimed loudly that Judith was dark blue, scribbling down notes about Marks and shades of color. Yuri didn't fancy getting burned so he didn't ask, but Karol had always been more ready to risk Rita's wrath.

"How do you know that?" Karol asked suspiciously. "Do you have a Mark from Judith?"

"None of your business!" Rita shrieked and began casting a fire ball, but Karol had already zipped away, moving surprisingly quickly in the desert heat.

Yuri was sure that the only reason Rita wasn't already an expert on Soulmarks was because her Blastia research kept her too busy to have another area of study.

The skin around Yuri's two red Marks was itself reddened, irrirated by Yuri scratching at it absent-mindedly. Yuri refused to accept that the gesture was a sign of any kind of remorse. Still, while the Marks on Yuri's arm maybe failed to bring forth regret, he soon gained two new ones that appeared on the back curve of his right hip, which were another story. One of the stars was a hot-blooded red and the other was a calm green. The two Marks that had taught him betrayal. Knowing the Don and the Duce had taught Yuri about scheming and betrayal, and he did indeed regret how the dishonesty of others had led to their deaths, as well as his own part in said deaths. Those ones Yuri didn't scratch at. He avoided touching them as much as possible, actually.

A literal Mark of backstabbing, even when he hadn't been the target. When the group took off to chase down Judith, Yuri wondered if that Mark that Rita had gotten from Judith had been replaced by one on Rita's back. The girl had started off so suspicious of people, there was no telling how deeply Judith crushing the Fiertia's ceres blastia had hurt her. Yuri didn't have a separate Mark for Judith but he was determined not to let it appear on his back. He would end the Krityan, if she proved to be untrustworthy.

In the end, all of Yuri's mental preparation wasn't needed. Instead, after Judith had finally rejoined them, Yuri pressed a hand to his left side, and felt warmth. His guild was safe and sound.

Despite all of the uncertainty and chance tied to Marks, Yuri felt a resigned certainty when Raven reintroduced himself as 'Schwann Oltorain, First Captain of the Imperial Knights'. He knew he would be leaving the Shrine of Baction with a new Mark, the only variable simply being where it would appear, which cluster of his sorrow it would add to.

The encounter ended in a way that Yuri hadn't guessed in any of the disbelieving considerations he'd had time for with everything happening so fast. The battle was intense and then the shrine was collapsing and finally Raven ended up sacrificing his own life to save those of his teammates, even after he'd betrayed and attacked them. And while Yuri ushered everyone else out ahead of him, he wasn't entirely glad to leave him behind. Not even close.

It was after Ba'ul took to the skies that Yuri carefully separated from the rest of the group. They were all still reeling from recent events, so Yuri had faith that he wouldn't be immediately interrupted, so he found a private nook on board the ship to look over his skin. He needed to find the new Mark he knew for certain had to be there.

Yuri did find a new Mark, but it hadn't ended up on his upper arm or on his back. Instead he found a grey star further down his arm, resting atop the pulse point on his left wrist.

A startled laugh escaped Yuri, prompting a confused sound from the ever-faithful Repede, who'd come after him by then. Yuri cradled his wrist in his right hand and turned to give his best friend a smile, the best one he could manage right now.

"I didn't want him dead." Yuri was admitting it to himself as much as Repede. He really hadn't been certain at some points back there. He sat down, hunched over like he was shielding the proof of his actual feelings. He looked at the Mark, and wondered about the color. It didn't really seem to suit the Raven he'd known.

"I didn't want you dead," Yuri told the Mark, like the one who'd caused it could still hear him from beyond the grave, just through this Mark connecting them. Repede was a warm presence by Yuri's side a moment before the dog pressed up against Yuri, offering silent comfort and support. Yuri let go of his newly marked wrist only long enough to give his friend's ears a grateful scratch.

In the end, Raven hadn't been another lesson in betrayal or vengeance. Encountering him hadn't even really been about justice, although it came close. Yuri rubbed a thumb on the Mark, steely grey, certain and solid. It was mercy, plain and simple. And Yuri thought that perhaps he needed that lesson, at least in the here and now.

**Author's Note:**

> This is a concept that started off as something simple but then I got really thinking about how it would all work. So, expect more in the series.


End file.
